6. PROJECT SUMMARY ? PILOT CORE The Pilot Core will provide funding to studies of innovative ideas or hypotheses that, if successful, will lead to improvements in the understanding, prevention, diagnosis, or treatment of hyperphenylalaninemia, biopterin defects, and related disorders. The core will fund the development of novel laboratory assays or instruments, assessment of novel biomarkers, execution of pilot clinical trials, or performance of pilot data mining studies on data accumulated from the longitudinal natural history study.